Thirteen duels and an orgy.

Today I went to Givery and saw Monet's gardens. Absolutely exquisite. If I lived in Paris I would go every month at different times of day to watch the light and flowers change. The lilies were blooming, white and pink. Tok billions of inadequate photos. It was crowded but didn't seem so; it carried its own serenity.

Little town quite pretty too. Sat on bench by blooming sunflowers and ate baguette with ham and cheese and read bad free Kindle translation of Cyrano de Bergerac. Now even more impressed with Richard Wilbur version. But even clumky translators could not ruin the bit where Christian insults Cyrano with repeated nose references.

Has anyone read that and also Lope de Vega's El Caballero de Olmedo? I thought I saw some similarities in the old school hero and his death by inglorious modernity.

Also reading Les Miseables for first time. Kind of a slog. Possibly bad translation. Briefly came to life with intro of Jean Valjean but now back to endless philosophical musing. At first thought utterly perfect bishop was satire but I guess not.

Also reading Les Miseables for first time. Kind of a slog. Possibly bad translation.

No, that sounds like a correct translation. :-) I read it in the French, but it took being stranded on a desert island(*) to get beyond the first of my four-volume set. I can't say it picks up exactly (at some point there's a two-chapter digression into the history of the Napoleonic Wars just to give us the appropriate background on how this one character scavenged off the battlefield once some years before ever appearing in the novel - seriously the book is like a novel crossed with an encyclopedia) but one eventually becomes adapted to its pacing.

(*) Teaching in New Caledonia. Lovely place to visit for a short holiday. A tad isolating to actually live there.